Revoltin' Bolton

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had a plan.

He tried to wage peace.

But the neocons in the White House, and the political machinations of former U. N. ambassador John Bolton, torpedoed Powell's efforts to forge an agreement with the G-8.... whose members include Britain, France and Germany.... that would have enticed Iran to rein in their nuclear ambitions with a package of "carrots."

Now Bolton is bragging about killing this diplomatic initiative.... in fact he says he used every possible bureaucratic and diplomatic maneuver to kill Powell's plan in his forthcoming book, "Surrender Is Not an Option." (WaPo)

It's thanks to loose cannons like Bolton, and the conniving of shadow president "Darth" Cheney, that we now seem about to hurtle over the precipice of what The Decider recently called World War III.

Bolton's book further proves that the White House neocons' worldview has been criminally reckless.... an arrogant sense of entitlement to squander the lives, treasure and good name of our country.

And what's more, that those who could, and should, have stopped this Constitution-shredding administration, like Powell and Rice, either meekly faded away or became enabling legacy hounds.

Chicken Hawks Sqawk

Like winter-starved sparrows pouncing on June bugs, the righty talking heads flew into full dudgeon at Sen. Barbara Boxer's pointing out to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that neither of them would "pay a particular price" in Iraq because they didn't have children of military age.

Neither of them have "The Lives on the Line," of their family members.... a barbed reminder by Boxer that those making the decisions to go, stay and escalate, escalate, escalate the war in Iraq are armchair hawks.

The spin over Boxer's statement spewing from the wingnuts and the White House propagandist-in-chief Tony Snow was framed as.... "a great leap backward for feminism,".... and, as Rice whined.... "I thought it was okay to be single."

Do they really think the "Way Forward"-jaded electorate can't see their obvious obfuscation? .

As Fred Hiatt points out in his editorial in the WaPo.... "It matters that we not allow the troops to serve only as props and political fodder - that we keep in our minds the real people in Iraq and Afghanistan....."

Boxer is picking at the scab of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy because it's a fact that those who have experienced war.... like Rice's predecessor Colin Powell, or WWII Allied Commander President Eisenhower.... know the ugliness of war and are loathe to rush troops into combat as a foreign policy centerpiece.

On the other hand, neither The Decider nor snarly puppeteer Cheney (or their children) have experienced the hell of war, .... nor has Rice tasted the horror she so marmishly sloganeers about.

The only thing taking a "great leap backward" with the newest troop "surge" is an Iraq policy in touch with the real lives and the real cost of The Decider's war of choice.